


Raise A Glass to Auld Lang Syne

by Feavel



Category: Hamilton-Miranda
Genre: College AU, F/M, It's still New Year's, M/M, Modern AU, New Year's Party, Rated T and Up for brief intense language, Written in an hour--oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 20:43:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5600179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feavel/pseuds/Feavel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Alex invite the crew to their apartment for a New Year's party. Antics and fluff ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raise A Glass to Auld Lang Syne

**Author's Note:**

> I think I may have accidentally stolen the title from somebody, I just don't remember where I saw it, if indeed I saw it at all.  
> If you know I didn't come up with it, please tell me who did, so I can credit them.  
> UPDATE: I found it. Tumblr user @thefederalistfreestyle used it to comment on a Tumblr post I reblogged. Sorry for stealing your thing, love!  
> Also, I apologize for any problems with my French--I used Google Translate for most of it. Translations are at the end.  
> And according to MS Word, this fic is 5,000 words long exactly. Not even on purpose. So satisfying.
> 
> Have a happy and safe New Year!

“So, Alex, what exactly is the plan again?” John sighs.

Alex talks while continuing to steer the cart with one hand and grab things from shelves and put them into the cart with the other. “The _plan_ , my dear John, is to throw a New Year’s party in our apartment.”

“A New Year’s party.” John says dully.

“Yeah.”

“In our apartment.”

“Yes.”

“On New Year’s Eve.”

Alex finally stops, giving his boyfriend a quizzical look. “What don’t you get?”

“I don’t get why you’re just telling me about this _now_ , while we’re shopping for the party that I just found out about now, _on December thirtieth._ ”

“Okay, yeah, I didn’t totally think that part through. Everyone else knows, though, so—that didn’t help, did it?” For John just stopped walking and began to dully bang his head on the door of the industrial freezer.

\--

“You know, most people would tell their roommates or their significant others about this kind of thing _before_ they told anyone else,” John complains once his head has stopped throbbing. “Never mind that I’m your roommate _and_ your significant other.”

“Yeah, well, _most people_ aren’t named Alexander Hamilton,” Alex points out cheekily. John opens his mouth, ready to argue, then closes it again. “Well, you’re not wrong,” he concedes. “At least tell me who this ‘everyone else’ is.”

Alex hands the cart to John (who takes it grudgingly) and starts to count on his fingers. This can’t be good. “Well, obviously Laf and Mulligan, and all three Schuyler sisters, I told Laf he could bring Adrienne if he wanted, and I told Burr that he and Theodosia could come if they wanted. Theo’ll probably end up making him come,” Alex snickers, “if he gets around to telling her. So all told, not counting you and me, that’s five for sure, maybe eight. Total: up to ten.”

“Up to ten?” John repeats incredulously. “Alex, our apartment can barely house two.”

“Well, it’s lucky we’re not asking them to live with us, then, isn’t it?”

John groans. “You know what I mean! And how are we supposed to buy and make food for ten people and put up whatever decorations we want before this party at an unknown time tomorrow, when it’s”—John checks his watch—“ten-thirty now?”

“The party’s at eight-thirty, and we’ll manage.” Alex takes the cart back and resumes his spree while John does some quick mental math.

“Ten hours. Okay. You’ve written a paper in less, right?”

“Papers, plural,” Alex corrects with a somewhat pathetically large amount of pride.

John already thanked God three times that he and Alex took down the Christmas decorations three days after Christmas. This makes four.

\-- 

Ten hours later, John’s and Alex’s apartment was ready for party-hosting; the kitchen is fit to burst with various party foods, including (but by no means limited to) pigs-in-a-blanket, pretzels, chips, and deli sandwiches. And a pie or three. Because—

“You can bake, John?” Alex asks in incredulity when John pulls an amazing-looking pecan pie out of the oven.

“Yeah,” John says. “My mom taught me when I was a kid. It was—and is—a great stress reliever.”

“How have I not known this, in lo, these many years I’ve known you?” Alex asks, pretending to be more offended than he really is to distract from the fact that he’s attempting to steal a pecan from its position in the artful circle of nuts on top of the pie. John, unfortunately, notices and swats his boyfriend’s hand away. “I honestly don’t know. It never came up, I guess. Haven’t had that much stress to relieve lately, believe it or not.”

“I can fix that,” Alex supplies helpfully. “Or you could…not,” John laughs. No sooner is the pie set to cool on the counter than there’s a knock on the apartment door. “I’ll get it,” Alex volunteers, as John quickly looks around the kitchen to make sure everything is out and ready to go. He takes his apron off, and has just decided to leave his hair in its ponytail, when he hears the voice of Hercules Mulligan. “The party has _arrived,_ bitches!”

There’s laughter from behind him, and a female voice John doesn’t know can be heard saying, “The _party_ should stay humble, because the _party_ bummed a ride off of me, and if the _party_ isn’t careful, he’ll be going home in a taxi.” She has a French accent, which can mean only one thing.

“Adrienne!” Alex exclaims. Alex is the only one of their merry band of misfits—besides Lafayette himself—to have met Lafayette’s girlfriend. “ _Bonjour,_ _Alex_ ,” Adrienne grins. “ _Et je vous ai dit, appelez-moi Adri_.”

“ _Quoi que vous disiez, Adri_ ,” Alex replies smoothly, kissing her on both cheeks in the French manner. “ _Avez-vous apporter votre petit ami avec vous?_ ” Asks John from where he’s perched himself on the couch. He knows it’s totally normal for Alex to interact with girls this way, but it still makes him feel a little weird. Not jealous, exactly, just—weird. Also, he wants it known that he speaks French, too. Adri jumps a little and looks around. When she sees John, she grins excitedly and approaches him.

“ _Oh!_ _Parlez-vous français, aussi?_ ” She asks. He returns, “ _Oui. Pas aussi bien que Alex, mais oui. Je suis John Laurens. Ravi de vous recontrer._ ” He holds his hand out for a handshake. She takes it, smiling. “ _Enchanté de faire votre connaissance, John. Je suis Adri de Noailles, et je ne porter Gilbert. Il ya un stationnement ma voiture, gentilhomme qu’il est.”_ She laughs when John makes a face and modifies, “ _Parfois_.”

“I heard that,” comes Lafayette’s voice from the hall outside the open door, followed by Lafayette himself, looking playfully offended at the lighthearted barb. “And hands off my girlfriend, Laurens,” he teases. John raises his hands in mock surrender as Adri goes to give Laf a quick hug. “You have nothing to worry about, Laf. I’m a taken man.” He grins at Alex, who grins back, crosses the floor, and pecks John on the cheek in a frankly adorable way.

“Get a room, you guys,” interjects Mulligan from the kitchen. “You get a room,” Alex retorts.

“I _have_ a room. This one,” Mulligan laughs. “Did you guys make all this?”

“Most of it,” Alex says before John can say anything. “The pies are all John.”

“Pies?” Lafayette repeats. “John? I didn’t know you could bake.” John shrugs.

This, it turns out, is the reaction everyone has, from Angelica Schuyler to Aaron Burr and his girlfriend Theodosia (“Please, call me Theo. It takes less time.”). And every time, John just shrugs, sometimes explaining, “Mom taught me,” sometimes saying nothing. It’s New Year’s Eve, there’s no need to make everyone sad with the not-exactly-Disney story of his childhood.

\-- 

 “So!” Once everyone has eaten and gathered in the living room, Alex claps his hands together once in a manner which is probably meant to be impressive. “Grab whatever food you still want, and do it fast, ‘cause now… _the games begin_.” John rolls his eyes at his overdramatic boyfriend, as his statement is met with scattered laughter. Even Aaron seems to be having a good time for now. How the rest of the night goes depends entirely on the games Alex chose; John didn’t have time to review them (which he really should have done first, considering the Thanksgiving Party Fiasco of 2014). Alex follows the few people who had gone to get food and returns not with his own pig-in-a-blanket or handful of popcorn, but with the one bowl in the whole apartment that hasn’t been utilized in the preparation of the food, as well as a stack of Post-It Notes and a few pens and pencils.

“First up,” Alex announces, “is a little game I like to call Salad Bowl. Couples, kiss each other now—this game has been proven to be almost as bad a relationship-wrecker as Mario Kart.”

“Is that because there are high stakes, or because you’re playing it?” Aaron teases. Everybody laughs—even Alex, a little—and Theo throws a pretzel at her boyfriend in mock reproach. Alex quickly recovers from the barb and says, “First, we need to split into two teams. How do we wanna do that?”

“We could just go every other person from where we are now,” John suggests. “That way we don’t have to move.”

“Boys versus girls,” Peggy proposes. Her sisters immediately jump on board, quickly followed by Theo and Adri, and the girls all begin to clap rhythmically as they chant, “Boys versus girls! Boys versus girls! Boys versus girls!”

Eventually, the boys cave and the required shuffling of seats happens so the gang is seated in a lopsided boy-girl-boy-girl circle. Alex rises from his new place on the couch and sets the bowl and writing utensils out on the coffee table. As he sits back down, he says, “Okay, everyone take three Post-Its and pass the stack around. What you wanna do is, you’re gonna write a person, place, thing, or idea on each Post-It Note you have, but it should be specific, because we’re all going to be guessing them. So you want it just specific enough to be hard, but not impossible. Of course, you can make it an inside joke you have with someone in this group, or it can be something only you know, but that just makes it less fun for everyone, because you’re basically guaranteeing your team points, provided you can remember it, of course.” By the time Alex finishes speaking, everyone has Post-It Notes, a writing utensil, and a blank stare.

“Once more, in English, please. And slowly,” Says Angelica. Alex gets a little flustered, as he always does when people don’t immediately understand his long-winded, Mach-1 rants, but he calms himself and tries again.

“You’re gonna write something on each of your three cards. It can be anything you want, from _dancing Groot_ to _the suspicious stain on the bathroom floor_ , but you don’t want it to be too generic, like just _Groot_ , or too specific, like _the suspiciously blood-like stain on the floor of the men’s bathroom_. Usually, I like to have something normally well-known, but a little weird, like _freedom of peach_ instead of _freedom of speech_. But this is just the first game, so no one’s faulting anyone for really hard cards unless they’re absolutely impossible. Oh, and don’t tell or show anyone what you’re writing, and fold it up before you put it in the bowl; we’re guessing all the cards every round.”

“There’s multiple rounds?” Mulligan asks.

“Four,” Alex confirms. “Each has its own set of rules, but I’ll explain those in a minute. Let’s all write our cards first.” Everyone sets to work, thinking long and hard about what to write on their Post-Its. Eliza, it’s revealed, has a somewhat adorable habit of twirling a lock of hair around her pencil while she thinks. It’s revealed when she pulls the pencil out of her hair too quickly and it brings some hairs with it on the way down. It’s slightly less adorable—though no less endearing—when she curses loudly at the sudden, sharp pain in her scalp.

“Before I kill you all at this game, I want you all to know I’ll still love you after I wipe the floor with your faces,” Lafayette says without looking up from the card on which he’s writing.

“It’s a team game, Lafayette,” Aaron reminds him. Laf raises his eyes to meet Aaron’s, and with the straightest poker face known to man, says, “Did I fucking stutter?”

Mulligan lets out a bark of laughter that makes his pencil fly off the Post-It Note, leaving a long slash in its wake. “Damn it, Laf, you made me fuck up my card!” He admonishes jokingly, while erasing the line that renders half his card useless. Lafayette puts a hand to his chest in mock surprise, putting on an air of offense. “Why, I did no such thing, my good Hercules,” he says in a spot-on impression of the Dean, George Frederick. “You fucked up your card all on your own.” This has everyone laughing; the Dean, dubbed “Mad George” by the students, must have been born in England, but no one is sure, because surely their accent isn’t _that_ exaggerated.

Alex, who was finished first (as in everything), is rapidly bouncing his knee up and down, impatient to start the game. This serves as enough of a distraction that John reaches over Angelica’s lap to clamp a hand down on his boyfriend’s knee. “Alex, you wanna explain how to play the first round as everyone finishes up?” He asks. Alex pounces on the chance to do something.

“The first round is really just getting to know everyone’s cards, because we use these same cards through the whole game. Since the main point is memorizing all the cards, this round’s the easiest: get your team to guess what’s on the card without saying anything that’s on the card, like in Taboo or Catch Phrase. Obvious exceptions are articles— _a_ , _an_ , and _the_ —and other really small words. We’ll decide specifics as we come across questions. Get your team to guess as many cards as you can in thirty seconds. Oh! I’ll be time- and scorekeeper.” Alex gets out his phone and an extra Post-It Note.

“If we’re keeping score,” Adri starts, “do we need team names?”

“Hell yeah, we do!” John says excitedly. Before anyone can come up with any suggestions of their own, Theo says, “Team Testosterone and the Estrogen Alliance!”

Alex cackles—full-on _cackles_ —as he writes the team names on his Post-It, and Eliza high-fives Theo. Without further ado, Mulligan and Burr put their final cards in the bowl, and the game begins.

“Ladies first,” Aaron supplies, gesturing to the bowl. Angelica grins and takes a card. “Ready, ladies?” General assent from Eliza, Peggy, Theo, and Adri, and Alex starts the timer. “Go!”

Angelica starts, “Okay, this person is a famous evolutionist—”

“Charles Darwin!” Theo interjects.

“Yes! And he discovered new kinds of this animal in the Galapagos Islands.”

“Oh, turtles!” Comes the answer from Adri.

“Yes! So if he had a… _preferred_ one of those animals, it could be called his what?”

Eliza leaps on board: “His favorite? Charles Darwin’s favorite turtle?”

“Right!” Angelica sets the Post-It down and grabs a new one in a frenzy. “Mariah Carey’s famous Christmas song.”

“Hall I Want for Christmas is Jew!” Peggy shouts. Everyone gives her a weird look (she looks somewhat sheepish as she admits to writing it herself), but Angelica proclaims, “Yeah, that’s right,” and snatches another card, just as Alex’s phone buzzes on the coffee table.

“Time,” Alex calls. “Put that card back, and let’s review those cards, so we can remember them later. _Charles Darwin’s favorite turtle_ , and _Hall I Want for Christmas is Jew_.”

“Peggy, how’d you come up with that one?” Theo laughs. Peggy shrugs. “I really liked Alex’s _freedom of peach_ example, so I did something like that with the first thing I thought of.”

“Boys’ turn!” Announces Lafayette, to which Aaron replies, “I think you mean Team Testosterone.” This sets the whole group laughing again, to the point where Burr has to douse the fire he started: “Okay, I wasn’t _that_ funny. Let’s go.” Alex sticks his hand in the bowl and looks at Angelica expectantly, to find she already has her phone’s timer out and ready to go. “Three, two, one, go,” she says, and Alex is off to the races. He yanks a Post-It out of the bowl, and laughs as his eyes dart across the paper. Even if he didn’t know Mulligan’s handwriting, he’d know this was the aspiring fashion designer’s card immediately.

“Okay, mine is red, John’s is blue—”

“Favorite color?” John supplies. Mulligan makes a noise like he recognizes the card.

“Yes! Keep going; Gilbert, what’s yours?”

Laf is clearly confused at being addressed by one of his many given names, but quickly recovers and proudly declares, “Plaid.”

Mulligan bristles. “Plaid’s not a color, Laf!”

“That’s the card!” Alex announces. He throws down the card and grabs another one. “A politician nobody likes.”

“Donald Trump,” supply all the boys at once.

“His fake hair.”

“Donald Trump’s toupee!” Says Laf triumphantly.

“Yes!” Another card is in Alex’s hand in a millisecond. “Oh, boy. Okay, this person’s on the student board with me—”

“Time,” Angelica interrupts. “Two points for everyone,” she announces.

“Ooh, all tied up,” Lafayette teases Adrienne from across the room. “What are you gonna do about it?”

“ _Nous allons vous botter le cul,_ is what we’ll do about it,” she grins wickedly. This has the French speakers in the room in gales of laughter.

The boys do, in fact, get their asses kicked, to hear the girls tell it later. As Mulligan helps Aaron gather the Post-It Notes that were strewn across the room in a panic, Alex reminds Angelica heatedly for the hundredth time that the girls only won the first round by six points, out of a possible thirty.

“And you shouldn’t have gotten the point for _John Laurens’ favorite turtle_ ; you said John’s name!”

“Alex,” Eliza says, trying not to sound as exasperated as she feels, “we’ve been over this. She caught herself before she finished saying his name and fixed the problem.”

“ _Before she finished—”_ Alex splutters. “It’s one syllable! How do you not say the entirety of the name ‘John’ in one go?”

The owner of the name in question has been softly banging his head on the coffee table for two minutes straight, and Adri is nearing that point herself. “ _Mon Dieu_ , Alexander. That was only the first round, right? Just let us keep the point and keep playing, so we don’t end up missing the ball dropping.”

\-- 

The second round—charades—is even more intense than the first. Chairs are knocked to the ground in the rush to stand up, cards are once again hurled hither, thither, and yon, and Alex almost overturns the coffee table when Peggy runs to the kitchen to use what remains of Aaron’s sandwich as a prop in getting the girls to guess _That piece of God-knows-what in Aaron’s sandwich_.

**\--**

“What’re the rules for the third round, Alex?” Eliza asks as Alex begins to calm down (though he’s still breathing heavily). Alex breathes _in, two, three, four, out, two, three, four_ , then replies in a surprisingly calm voice. “In the third round, you condense each card into one word, so if we use my _dancing Groot_ example from earlier, you could say _tree_. Then you could say _tree_ again as many times as you want, but you can’t change it; you have to stick with _tree_. Pro tip: if your team doesn’t get the card almost immediately, switch it out for another one.”

“I hope y’all remember all the cards,” John says, playfully smug smile securely on his face. He’s the reason the boys are in the lead right now, and everyone knows it.

Some of the more imaginative gems for round three end up including “overdramatic” for _Student Council Treasurer Alexander Hamilton_ (Alex pretends to challenge Lafayette to a duel “for impugning my honor”) and “dammit” for _Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette, Baron de Vissac, Seigneur de St. Romain_ (Adri is the first and only one to get it, and she says it so quickly that only Laf himself could tell that she said it right).

\-- 

In between the third and fourth rounds, while half the crew takes a much-needed “potty break,” Mulligan looks over the score sheet, quickly adds together the tallies, and announces, “Guys, the teams are tied. This round’s for the game.” Various reactions are had, of course, as is bound to happen when more than one person is around, but the general consensus is “holy shit we’ve gotta win.”

“Please, God, tell me the fourth round is easy,” Adri says.

“Unfortunately,” Alex grins, “the fourth round is the hardest. And you don’t have to call me God,” he adds cheekily. Adri smacks him on the shoulder.

“The fourth round…is the face round.”

“Why don’t I like the sound of that?” Aaron groans. Alex continues, unperturbed. “Where in the third round, we had to condense each card into one word, in this round, put on the facial expression which you think best expresses your card.” The entire party joins Aaron in groaning. “Unlike last round, you can change facial expressions if you want, but be careful; it’s not charades. Face only.”

This is the round that almost sends this party the way of the Thanksgiving Party Fiasco, banned from ever being spoken of again. For _Laf’s suspicious resemblance to Jefferson,_ Lafayette rushes to undo his ponytail (the hair tie that was in his hair snaps in his haste to free it) and assumes a smug smirk, looking directly at Alex. Alex admits later that this actually made the hair on the back of his neck stand up; “You nailed his self-righteous-asshole face.” Peggy is the unlucky one who draws _Donald Trump’s toupee_ , but she pulls off his facial expression wonderfully and has the whole room in stitches.

 When Alex opens his mouth in a wide O, it’s John who sings, “Two-four-six-oh-OOOOOOOOONNNE!” This is met with a deafening silence, broken after a few seconds by Theo, who starts to clap. Immediately, everyone joins in and congratulates John on his beautiful high tenor voice, which makes John blush a magnificent autumnal crimson, in turn causing his myriad freckles to stand out all the more. He looks so cute that Alex can’t help but steal a quick kiss on the cheek, which makes John blush even harder before returning the favor. The Schuyler sisters (and Laf and Mulligan) chorus, “Awwhh…” While Theo laughs, “Get a room, you two!”

At the end of the game, points are tallied up, and the girls are crowned victorious, much to their jubilation. Angelica sings, “Who run the world?”

“GIRLS!” All five girls shout.

“Who run the world?”

“GIRLS!”

“Who run the world?”

“GIRLS!”

This continues for at least five minutes, while the boys alternately laugh and give each other looks of _oh, my God, make it stop._

After the umpteenth chorus of “GIRLS,” Alex checks his watch and shouts, “Oh, look at the time! It’s five minutes ‘till midnight!” This shuts everyone up as John quickly turns on the TV and changes to a news channel, where they can watch the ball drop in Times Square.

As the last celebrity performance before the big countdown starts, Peggy taps Mulligan on the shoulder and asks, “Can I talk to you in the kitchen?”

“Sure,” replies a confused Mulligan as he follows her into the kitchen. “What do you need?”

“This is gonna sound really weird,” Peggy starts haltingly, “but…would you mind kissing me when the ball drops? Not anything crazy,” she adds hastily in response to Mulligan’s deer-in-headlights expression. “We don’t have to make out or anything. And if you say yes, I won’t expect us to be in a relationship after. I know I’m still in high school, and I don’t know whether you have a girlfriend or not, so you don’t have to say yes if you don’t want to. It’s just—I’ve really felt like part of your group tonight, even though I’m the youngest one here, and if I’m the only girl not kissing anyone when the ball drops, I’d feel like the baby of the group again, and I wanna end tonight on a higher note than that. You don’t have to say yes,” Peggy repeats.

Mulligan thinks for a minute, then says, “Yeah, sure. If you really want me to. Just, like, a peck on the cheek or something, right?” Peggy beams. “Yeah, that’d be perfect. Thank you so much, Herc.” He gives her a casual, one-armed hug, and replies, “No problem, Peg. But I’ve gotta ask. You said you were scared you’d be the only girl not kissing anyone, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Angelica and Eliza don’t have boyfriends here tonight, and everyone else came with their SO.” The unasked question makes Peggy giggle. “They kiss each other. They’ve been doing it since before I was born. Up until a year or two ago, we always celebrated New Year’s as a family, and when little three-year-old Angelica saw our mom and dad kissing on New Year’s Day, she wanted to try it. The only person nearby was Eliza, who was two, so Angelica kissed Eliza, and a tradition was born. When I was born, our brother Philip wasted no time in kissing me every New Year’s, but he’s obviously not here, so—” She grins and shrugs. “I asked you. Thanks again for saying yes, by the way,” she adds as they walk back into the living room, one minute before the ball drops.

Luckily, only Eliza noticed their absence, and she gives them a look of understanding before turning her focus back to the TV. Everyone has broken off into pairs, ready to kiss their significant others at the moment the New Year rolls around.

When the Times Square Ball finally touches the roof of One Times Square, everyone in the tiny apartment takes a short moment to cheer, “Happy New Year!”

Peggy darts in for a quick, chaste peck on Mulligan’s cheek (she has to stand on tiptoe), and he smiles and returns the favor, before administering another one-armed hug.

Eliza and Angelica share a closed-mouth kiss with exaggerated comedy, exclaiming, “Oh, Angelica” and “Oh, Eliza,” earning laughs from all who can spare the time.

Aaron seems a bit reluctant to display more affection than a kiss to Theo’s forehead with all these people around, but he doesn’t object when she tilts her head up so his kiss lands on her mouth, nor when she deepens the kiss.

Alex and John kiss a lot more tamely than anyone (including themselves) expected, and when they break apart, they linger where they are, foreheads resting against each other. Alex whispers, “Happy New Year, John,” and John mutters, “Happy New Year, Alex.”

Adrienne and Lafayette are, to say the least, passionate. After five minutes straight of intense making out, without any sign of stopping (Alex was about to shout, “Get a room”), they stop abruptly and look around sheepishly. No one else is still kissing; some are staring at the French couple, and some are trying very hard to look the other way, with varying degrees of success. Lafayette grins. “Too much love _à la française?_ ” He asks nobody in particular.

“ _Je pense qu’oui, mes amis,”_ Alex laughs. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

Lafayette and Adrienne chuckle and hug tightly, saying to each other, “ _Je t’aime, chérie,_ ” before sitting down on the couch, hand in hand. After a minute or two of content silence, Theo speaks up. “John and Alex, was there anything else you wanted to do, or are we free to go? Because _some_ one”—she pokes Aaron in the shoulder—“is looking like he wants to go home.” Aaron gives his girlfriend a grateful look. John looks at Alex, eyebrows raised. “I didn’t have anything else in mind. Did you?” Alex shrugs. “Nope. You can go if you want. Thanks for coming, you two.”

“Thanks for having us,” Theo says as she rises to hug each person in turn before leaving. Aaron elects instead to shake the men’s hands and wave politely at the women as he follows Theo out the door with a “Thanks, John. Alex.”

“Anytime,” John calls after him. The door closes, and John and Alex look around. “Does anyone else need-slash-want to go?” Alex asks. “We’re good ‘till we’ve outstayed our welcome,” Says Adrienne, looking at Laf and Mulligan for confirmation. “Right, boys?”

“Yep,” “ _Oui_ ,” come the responses.

Eliza checks her phone for the time. “We can stay for an hour or two, if that’s okay with you guys,” she says.

“Oh, yeah,” John says. “Stay as long as you want.”

“What do we wanna do for the next hour or two, though?” Alex asks. “Salad Bowl was the only game I had in mind, since I knew it would take so long—”

“And you’re really bad at thinking things through,” John interjects. Alex playfully punches him in the arm. “Hey! I’m only _pretty_ bad at thinking things through.”

Angelica quips, “The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one.” Alex punches her, too. She punches back. “Ow,” Alex whimpers (with only some exaggeration).

“What if we watched a movie, to calm everyone down?” Mulligan suggests.

“Okay, Dad,” Alex teases. “What movie?”

“Cheesy French movie?” Lafayette asks, only half a question.

“Cheesy French movie!” Everyone confirms in unison. Peggy modifies, “With subtitles, please, for those of us who don’t speak French.”

“Naturally,” says Adri, at the same time as Lafayette teases, “Weak!” He gets a punch in jest, too.

\-- 

The cheesy French movie passes with the most incident coming from the French-speakers, who frequently parrot the most cringe-worthy lines, and spend a few minutes after the movie acting out their favorite scenes with as much exaggeration as possible. After the latest surge of laughter, everyone sighs and looks around at each other. “I think that’s our cue to go,” Eliza says after a while. She, Peggy, and Angelica stand up almost as one. “We should probably go home, too,” Adri agrees. She, Laf, and Mulligan also rise. Hugs and “Happy New Years” are passed around, reaching some people twice, but everyone at least once, and just as quickly as it had filled up, the apartment is empty again.

John and Alex look at each other, then at their apartment, littered with trash, crumbs, and Post-It Notes. “We,” John says, “are cleaning this up in the morning.”

“Hell yeah,” Alex agrees with a smile. “Happy New Year, John.”

“Happy New Year, Alex.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Bonjour, Alex."=Hello, Alex.  
> "Et je vous ai dit, appelez-moi Adri."=And I told you, call me Adri.  
> "Quoi que vous disiez, Adri."=Whatever you say, Adri.  
> "Aves-vous apporter votre petit ami avec vous?"=Did you bring your boyfriend with you?  
> "Oh! Parlez-vous français, aussi?"=Oh! Do you speak French, also?  
> "Oui. Pas aussi bien que Alex, mais oui. Je suis John Laurens. Ravi de vous recontrer."=Yes. Not as well as Alex, but yes. I'm John Laurens. It's nice to meet you.  
> "Enchanté de faire connaissance, John. Je suis Adri de Noailles, et je ne porter Gilbert. Il ya un stationnement ma voiture, gentilhomme qu'il est."=Nice to meet you, John. I'm Adri de Noailles, and I did bring Gilbert. He's parking my car, gentleman that he is.  
> "Parfois."=Sometimes.  
> "Nous allons vous botter le cul."=We'll kick your ass.  
> "Mon Dieu."=My God.  
> "à la française" (as of love)=Literally, "French." As far as I can tell, it just means a lot more PDA than love "à l'Anglais," or "English love." Someone correct me if I'm wrong.  
> "Je pense qu'oui, mes amis."=I think so, my friends.  
> "Je t'aime, chérie."=I love you, dearest.  
> "Oui."=Yes.
> 
> Again, have a happy and safe New Year!


End file.
